Scientific cosmopolitanism in the making. How Florentine republicans, religious exiles, and Padua University alumni joined English intelligence networks contributing to the development of a protocosmopolitan mindset in the second half of sixteenth-century Europe.

This essay considers the contribution of Florentine republican and religious exiles on one hand, and of Padua University alumni on the other hand, to the development of a proto-cosmopolitan mindset in the second half of sixteenth-century Europe. It focuses in particular on their services for English intelligence networks through the analysis of the Corbinelli-Pinelli correspondence. This set of manuscripts has been considered so far only as evidence about the Republic of Letters. In this essay, instead, it serves two purposes. First, it brings to the fore the neglected political activities of Florentine republicans in Elizabethan England. Secondly, it highlights the role of Padua University alumni in English intelligence operations which focussed on the dissemination of anti-papal writings. The social and educational backgrounds of the people involved in the network under consideration here demonstrate the connexion between education and support for antipapal policies among individuals from the middle ranks of society regardless of their Protestant or Catholic faiths. Whig insistence on characterising English anti-Catholic political attitudes as mainly directed against the Pope as a head of state could equally describe the attitudes of the Italian men in this essay. Furthermore, given the mobile dimension in which they operated, this essay warns against easily calling them ‘religious emigres’, prefering to stress their agency in mobility rather than their victimhood. Lastly, this essay argues that, while abroad, these men did their best to get political intelligence along with a wide variety of scholarly works around Europe, crossing confessional and political boundaries. In doing so, they set something great in motion: they got scholars of different religious and political beliefs accustomed to thinking that they will be able to stay tuned to the latest news despite wars and the mounting confessional propaganda. This was their contribution to the development of a cosmopolitan mindset in the second half of sixteenth century Europe.